Joe Jones: Just kill off the EFL Trophy already

The EFL Trophy is despised by a significant proportion of football fans, and rightly so.

It's effectively been hijacked by the Premier League for the benefit of their academies to give their reserve teams some competitive action.

This has come at the expense of the teams in League One and League Two, who cannot do the same thing themselves and will even be sanctioned if they fail to field a number of first-team players.

It's not like the teams in the bottom two divisions of the Football League already have 50-odd games to play already when you factor in the 46 standard league games, potentially the playoffs, and the League and FA Cups.

No, let's force their already tired and weary players to turn out not for one extra game, as it was in the past, but three more games as a minimum.

But let's face it, when was the last time that the EFL Trophy actually any good?

Having a competition only open to the 48 teams in the third and fourth tier was never going to throw up any bumper ties.

Previously, there was a 50-50 team that you'd be playing a team that you'd be facing twice in the league anyway.

And even if you were drawn against a team in the league above or below you, it's still unlikely to be the kind of match-up that will make fans excited.

The only exception to this would be if you were drawn against a fallen "giant" - say Blackburn Rovers or Charlton Athletic. Only then would it be somewhat exciting for a fourth-tier team.

But even then, would the more illustrious team actually make any effort in the competition? Winning such a tinpot competition as the EFL Trophy would be a permanent mark of shame for such a team, a reminder that they had once fallen on hard times.

And on top of that, having a competition played largely on weekdays may work if it's something like the Champions League, or the latter rounds of a proper competition like the FA Cup or League Cup, but a midweek trip to Morecambe or Southend is hardly going to generate enthusiasm - and it's not like there's the prospect of better ties ahead.

That said, even having a group with local rivals Mansfield Town and Lincoln City, as it is at present, is not a particularly exciting thing, given it feels forced, plus all the previous points that made the competition shoddy in the first place, plus the Premier League meddling that have rendered the competition at best pointless, at worst outright toxic.

The EFL Trophy is a moribund, pointless and utterly futile competition. The Premier League intervention can either be seen as an attempt to breathe new life into it, or as a parasite or virus that has taken over its host and completely zombified it.

Either way, it reflects badly on the competition, so the best thing would be to just let it die off.

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